Theresa May’s Brexit compromise won’t work

So, finally, we have a spirit of compromise. Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May are going to sit down together and hammer out a deal on which both their respective parties can agree. Well, maybe not. There has been plenty of analysis over the past few hours predicting how it could all unwind – with further ministerial resignations and so on. But there is something more fundamentally wrong with what Theresa May has proposed. While searching for compromise might be a reasonable way to proceed on most political issues it simply doesn’t work in the case of Brexit.

Either of the ‘extreme’ ends of political opinion on Brexit make sense: repealing Article 50 and staying in the EU on existing terms or leaving without a deal, exiting the single market and customs union in the process. True, the former would cause outrage among Brexit voters and would be politically impossible without backing in a second referendum.